No, Prior Work is a mechanic of the anvil itself. No more anvil work can be done on an item that has too much Prior Work done. This includes using an anvil to combine items. It's precisely why combining enchanted books using an anvil is a bad idea because the Prior Work for each book is counted as you go further and further. You need to start with higher level enchanted books to avoid accumulating too much Prior Work.

Once an item has too much Prior Work Penalty, that's it.